A COMMON trick used by ‘dodgy’ Fire Stick owners to stream TV illegally won’t work to skirt Amazon’s latest crackdown.
The retail giant is pressing ahead with the global rollout of a major block on unlawful apps that allow piracy on Amazon Fire Stick devices.
Last week, The Sun revealed how Amazon was blocking so-called “dodgy” Fire Stick apps.
They’re commonly used by TV pirates to stream the latest Hollywood films and live sports without paying the original creators or broadcasters.
Often, illegal streamers would use a type of app called a VPN to evade detection.
But The Sun understands that this will have no effect on the block – and users will still be prevented from streaming illegally.
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VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and VPN apps are great for boosting your security.
For a start, they encrypt your online activity – scrambling it so that no one can spy on it.
So if you’re using the Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, a VPN would protect you.
And they can also make you appear as though you’re logging on from a different location.
These two factors make a VPN a prized tool for internet pirates looking to skirt restrictions and hide their online activity.
For instance, a VPN would allow you to access a website that had been blocked by your internet provider.
But Amazon’s latest block can’t be dodged using a VPN.
That’s because Amazon’s block is at the device level.
The company has teamed up with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment to block an evolving list of apps known for enabling piracy.
So if you try to load one of these apps on your device, it won’t launch.
“Piracy is illegal, and we’ve always worked to block it from our Appstore,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Sun.
“Through an expanded program led by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition fighting digital piracy, we’ll now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our Appstore.
“This builds on our ongoing efforts to support creators and protect customers, as piracy can also expose users to malware, viruses, and fraud.”
Amazon was already blocking piracy apps from appearing on the official Amazon Appstore.
But the latest block targets “side-loaded” apps that were installed from outside of the Appstore.
The good news is that the block doesn’t break your Fire Stick.
You can still use a legitimate Amazon Fire Stick to stream TV legally.
And if you have any other model than the new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Select, you’re still able to fairly easily sideload apps from outside of the Amazon Appstore.
However, the new Select model runs on Vega OS instead of Google‘s Android, and doesn’t allow side-loading – making accessing piracy apps much more difficult.
Amazon’s latest crackdown is a global effort that kicked off on Friday, October 31.
It’s expected to significantly impact the community of Fire Stick owners using the devices for illegal streaming.
“While there will inevitably be some user backlash, streaming content illegally is against the law,” industry expert Paolo Pescatore told The Sun.
STREAM SMARTER – NOT MORE DANGEROUSLY
HERE’S some advice from The Sun’s tech editor Sean Keach…
The fact that millions of Brits are turning to piracy isn’t a surprise.
Telly subscriptions are now wildly expensive, and it’s increasingly hard to justify having them all.
I mean a top-tier Netflix subscription will cost you £17.99 a month, while Disney+ comes in at £14.99 a month.
And the offering seems to be getting worse: Amazon now shows ads on your Prime Video movies and shows unless you pay extra (on top of your Prime membership) to remove them.
That’s an extra £2.99 on top of the regular £8.99 fee.
Netflix, meanwhile, just hiked prices in the US – and experts told The Sun that a UK rise is likely to follow.
And if you pay for Sky – and extra services like Sky Sports – then your costs will simply balloon.
So what are you to do?
Well one of the best strategies to cut your TV bills is to try something called “service cycling”.
That’s where you only have one TV service active at a time, and then rotate through a list.
So one month you pay for Netflix and watch all of its top telly.
Then scrap it and move on to Disney+ the next month, before binning that and going to Amazon for the third month.
Do this with three or four services then start the whole process over again.
It means you’ll get three or four months in each year to watch all of each app’s content.
So you won’t miss any top shows, but you’ll avoid paying for all of the apps every single month for an entire year.
It brings enormous savings and you won’t miss out on any great telly either.
Plus it’s totally legal, so you don’t have to worry about that.
“But there is a broader problem: consumers are forced to pay escalating subscription fees to watch content.”
The Sun has written regularly about the dangers of using “dodgy” Fire Sticks.
But despite the risks, many TV fans still turn to illegal streaming to avoid paying increasingly high streaming costs.
We’ve seen several price hikes this year, including Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV+.
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Paolo, tech analyst at PP Foresight, explained: “Broadcasters are spending more to secure live sports rights and passing these costs onto consumers who can’t afford them, leading to a messy, fragmented experience.
“The privacy problem can only be solved by a cohesive effort by everyone, from glass to glass, including telecom companies that own the pipe and block any potential illegal streams.”
